


Snapshots

by Heather



Category: due South
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:42:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happily ever after ain't all it's cracked up to be. Except when it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tres_mechante](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tres_mechante/gifts).



> For tres_mechante, who wanted Frannie living happily ever after.

There are times when Frannie wishes just a little bit that she was married.

It's not exactly a hankering for a man around the house; Frannie is perfectly capable of fixing her own toilet, opening her own jars, and getting her own stuff off high shelves, thank you very much. And it's not because Ma nags her every other day about how much better it would be for the kids if they had a dad around- her own dad spent ninety-nine days out of a hundred at the pool hall, married or not, and she doesn't think she's any worse off for it. It's not even the trappings of romance, although she wouldn't say no to some roses that are not yellow and that arrive on any other occasion than Mother's Day.

She most desires a hypothetical husband for one thing, and one thing only: the ability to roll over in bed and say to somebody, "You go get her, it's _your_ turn."

Out in her living room, she can hear the TV playing at a quiet hum. By the sound of it, she's taking another shot at wearing out the "Toy Story" tape. (Potty training's a nightmare of accidents and near-misses, with plenty of struggle and little reward, and coat-buttoning shall not even be discussed. But damn if the kid hadn't figured out the VCR roughly twenty minutes after becoming strong enough to pick up a tape.)

With monstrous and heroic effort, Frannie drags herself out of her bed and glances, bleary-eyed, in the general direction of the clock. The bright red numbers take a moment to resolve. _3:00 A.M._ She groans. Why had no one thought to warn her that she was adopting a vampire who would strike hardest just before dawn?

She pads out to the living room, and yep, it's "Toy Story," blasting away at the special volume level of "wake Mommy but not the neighbors," and sure as shit, there's her little peanut, curled up with Ante, raptly watching a dinosaur agonize about the possibility of rejection.

"Hey, you," she whispers, sitting down next to the little girl, who would look downright angelic in her pigtails and Barbie pajamas if it wasn't three o'clock in the freaking morning. "What're you doin' awake, huh?"

Vivi- Vivian Vecchio, her poor baby who got shorthanded to initials on the first meeting with her uncle Ray- is only two, and doesn't talk much, even for a toddler who's still working out what language is and why she'd want to be a part of it. Frannie's not really surprised that the only answer she gets is a pudgy little hand pointing at the TV screen and a timid little "rawr!" (Frannie's best translation: _Watching a dinosaur. Duh._ )

With excruciating care, she extracts the baby from where she's wound herself up with Ante into a lumpy, tangled mess of kid and poodle where you can't see where one ends and the other begins without finding a solid seam to follow, and pulls Vivi into her lap. "You're supposed to be sleeping, kid. You tryin' to kill me or what?"

Vivi coils up into a ball, wrapping her hot little hands up in Frannie's t-shirt before pointing at the TV again. _There's a **dinosaur,** Mom. What part of "dinosaur" don't you understand?_

Frannie sighs and kisses her on the top of her head. "I hope you know that if I were any less tired, you'd be in a ton of trouble right now. Got it?"

Vivi doesn't acknowledge this with so much as a nod, which she supposes is pretty par for the course for a mini-Vecchio, especially a two-year-old who thinks that pointing at dinosaurs justifies everything.

She kisses the top of her head again, gives her a little squeeze, and sets her down on the floor next to Ante so she can go check on the other kids.

("Six, Frannie?" Ray had been incredulous. "Seriously- six?"

"I think is a _wonderful_ idea, Francesca," Ma had interjected, giving her a hug. "So much love to give, my baby. Not wasting it anymore on the poodle!"

"Thanks, Ma," she'd said, choosing to ignore the slight on Ante in favor of accepting the maternal support. You had to take what you could get in her family.

"But six," Ray said. "That's--" He'd held up six fingers. "Six!"

Frannie gave him an exasperated eyeroll. "They're a sibling group," she said. "If I don't take 'em all, they're gonna have to split 'em up. You think that should happen?"

"I think that anything happening is better than having six kids!" Ray cried.

" _Raimundo,_ leave your sister alone," Ma said.

Ray glared. Frannie gave him a triumphant look.

"You barely got it together with the dog, and it came already housebroken," Ray said. "What are you gonna do with six kids?"

"It's only temporary," Frannie said. "I'll worry about what I'm gonna do when I get one that's permanent."

The arrangement had rather quickly crossed over to permanent.)

The nursery was situated in the rear of the house, in theory a playroom squeezed between two bedrooms with three kids each. In practice, the whole lot preferred to sleep in there more often than not, so that they could create chaos in the mornings with maximum efficiency. Vivi was the only one that had a tendency towards wandering at night, but the triplets- born at the tail end, only nine months younger than the twins, who were themselves only a year younger than Vivi- were incredibly light sleepers, who roused for even the slightest noise.

When she gets to the room, two out of three are awake: Alicia at peace, sucking her thumb and watching her mobile, and Ana waving her little arms and legs in the air in frustration, trying so hard to roll over and still not quite making it.

This situation, at least, she can fix with pacifiers.

("Aren't you not supposed to give 'em those anymore?" Kowalski had asked her, the first time he visited and saw her calm the babies with Nuks. He scratched his head, looking awkward. "Don't they mess up their teeth or something?"

Frannie rolled her eyes. "I'm not taking advice from the guy whose most recent experience with kids ended with him handcuffed to a radiator, Ray." The pacifier hadn't cut it with little Ava, the youngest of the three, so Frannie had swapped her over to a bottle instead while she gave Kowalski a look. "You're unqualified to give advice."

"What, you think I don't know anything about kids?" Kowalski asked, affonted.

She laughed. "I know you don't know anything about kids."

"I know stuff!" he said. "Like you're holding that bottle wrong. Kid's gonna get milk straight up her nose."

"I am not, and she is not," Frannie said.

"Gimme, I'll show you." Kowalski held out his arms.

"You know, if you want to hold her, all you got to do is ask," she said, passing the baby and bottle to him. "I got two arms and six babies. You can come over and hold as many as you want."

"Ha ha," he said. "Seriously, I got this. Watch."

It had taken less than a minute for Ava to start crying and sneeze milk all over his shoulder.

"Maybe this one's broken," Kowalski said, scowling at Frannie as she laughed.)

Frannie waits and watches for a moment, then turns the key in the mobile to get the music going. It's Beethoven or some such, or so the box says, but all Frannie really cares about is that it can reliably counted upon to soothe two out of three triplets nine out of ten times. It's a lower failure rate than just turning the lights off to get the kids to sleep, anyway. The mobile's never produced harpy screams from six sobbing children at once.

She peeks in on the twins- her only boys, and the only ones of the lot who will sometimes sleep in their bedroom. They're down for the count, thank God, or else they might've tried to climb out of the cribs to come after her. They're old enough now to stand up and even try to get a leg over.

(Ben is the older of the twins, and it had been an awkward moment the first time they'd met Fraser. Holding both twins on his lap, he'd tripped over a perfectly good puffin face when she told him their names.

"Honestly?" he'd asked, looking at her with such pleasant surprise that Frannie hated to crush him with reality.

"They're foster kids, Frase," she reminded him. "I didn't pick the names, I just deal with what they came with."

Only Fraser could rein his emotions in that quick. The look he gave her was bland and polite, like they were only discussing the weather and not the awkward coincidence that Frannie's eldest son shares a moniker with her most devastating near-miss of all time. "Ah, yes, of course."

Then he made the puffin face for the boys again, setting them to shrieking laughter, and Frannie's heart gave a little tiny jump, for what might've been.)

She pulls the covers up to each boy's shoulder, and kisses their heads, too. 

Quiet as a mouse, she creeps back out to the living room, where Vivi's ignoring the TV- too much cowboy, not enough dinosaur, in the current scene- in favor of rubbing her face against Ante's fur.

Frannie gives her a smile. "She getting a good sniff of you, girl?"

Ante lets out a low groan, but doesn't protest. She's figured out in the last couple months that her overarching purpose in life is to be Vivi's pillow, for whenever the little girl takes a mind to it.

"Shove over, kid," Frannie says, settling down to nestle up with the two of them. Ante lets out another groan, this time as if to express the idea that the weight of two Vecchios on her side is way above her pay grade, but she still doesn't move. Frannie scratches her ear as a thank you for the trouble. She grins a little and scratches Vivi's ear, too.

"What do you think, baby?" she asks. "Wanna back it up to the dinosaur again?"

Vivi turns and buries her face in Frannie's stomach, like it's the only place she ever wants to be.

Frannie gives her baby's shoulder a squeeze, and thinks, _You and me both, princess. You and me both._


End file.
